The Eternal Paddy: Irish Identity and the British Press, 1798-1882 by Michael de Nie (review)

Reviews thinking about Crick's claims about the impotence of critics who have developed their rational minds at the cost of neglecting, if not altogether disabUng, their emotional Ufe. The discussion of the analogy betweenJ. S. MiU and Hardy detaiUng their emotional immaturity, which borders upon a kind of adolescent arrested development, is chilüng to read. Contemplating Crick's thoughts about the kinds of novels for which professors and students share a mutual regard raises some troubUng questions about the relationship between inteUectual expertise and the capacity for passion. In training ourselves to become sophisticated thinkers, have we undermined any chance to become emotionaUy mature? The troubUng conclusion that the book hints at is that in some ways scholars and students remain aU but indistinguishable in their emotional education and development. MichaelJohn DiSanto Dalhousie University Michael de Nie. The EternalPaddy: Irish Identity and the British Press, 1798-1882. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), xü + 340pp. Michael de Nie's book examines a broad cross-section of the British press to analyse "the arc of opinion in Victorian society" (13) on Ireland and the Irish from 1798 to 1882. By the author's own admission, the study is not "an exercise in formal newspaper history" (28). This is not certainly due to lack of consideration for the discipUne, of which de Nie shows a considerable awareness. His goal is not to identify editorial policies of specific tides, but rather to investigate how a range of national, local and special-interest newspapers were involved in the construction of British pubUc opinion on Ireland. De Nie's contention, after examining over ninety newspapers, is that the image of Ireland underwent several changes in the period under scrutiny. These shifts were based on what he terms objective and contextual interests in the representation of the "sister island." Objective interests for de Nie are "concerns that existed independently of each crisis in Anglo-Irish relations" (91). Contextual interests are instead related to specific incidents in the history of the two nations. For this reason, de Nie chooses to focus 128volume 31 number 2 Reviews his study on four of these topical events: the 1798 rebeUion, the 1845-52 potato famine, the "Fenian panic" of the late 1 860s and the Land War of 1879-82. In chartering this evolution, the main "objective interests" lie for de Nie in the three discourses of race, reUgion and class. Paddy "the objectified Irishman" (4) is constructed throughout the nineteenth century as a Celt, a CathoUc and a peasant. Gender for de Nie plays only a secondary role, mosdy in relation to certain pictorial personifications of Ireland as the maid Erin. Even if these ideologies formed the basis of British representation of Ireland, de Nie argues that they were not emphasised equaUy at aU times. Studies by L. P. Curtis and R. N. Lebow have in the past used race as the determinant concern in British images of Ireland. De Nie joins the growing ranks of those who chaUenge this view and argues instead that racial determination of Irishness emerged slowly and only as a part of a multilayered picture. As each crisis highüghted Irish resistance to AngUcisation, so did Paddy become more irredeemably "other." In chapter one, de Nie's attention is focused on the 1798 United Irishmen rebeUion and the foUowing Act of Union between Britain and Ireland in 1801. The author singles out several recurrent elements in the representation of the rebeUion. First is the Unk with France, especiaUy in the perceived role of French ideas in the inspiration of the rising. The British press portrays Irish peasants as guUible and naturaUy rebeUious, but blames the leaders of the United Irishmen for infecting them with French ideas. These character weaknesses are ascribed to a racial lack of rationaUty and a cultural CathoUc creduUty. Together these repeated assertions contribute to creating "strategies of innocence" exculpating Britain for the disorders in Ireland. The Union is presented as the necessary act of conciUation after the suppression of the rebels, and the gateway to future assimüation of the Irish into an overaU British identity. Chapter 2 examines perhaps the most controversial point in the relationship between...